i'd rather be numb
by misguideddreamer
Summary: "Katerina," he says again, and it is a reverent prayer and a broken promise rolled into one.


_Four times Katerina Petrova and Elijah Mikaelson ran and one time they did not._

Two hundred years later, and the glittering city of St. Petersburg lays itself out at her feet for her to conquer. She rises faster than she has ever risen before, and finds herself addicted to the fame and all it brings. Her hair stays loose and free, curling towards her back as it did before, and she ensure it stays that way. To cover her hair would signify her taking a husband, and Katerina Petrova is far too clever to let something as trivial as a man bother her. You did once, her brain whispers sometimes, when she hears the familiar tones of Bulgarian in the Russian she now speaks. Once a man outwitted you and it cost you everything you had. It shall never happen again, she says to herself, arranging the furs on her head so her hair spilled out becomingly. No, Katerina Petrova is far too clever for them now.

He finds her there, skating on the ice with gloved hands clutching a child's small palm in her own. She is loved here, he thinks, feeling something within himself clench as she spins with the child, purple skirts billowing around her. I can smell your blood, he'd said, and he can smell it still. He stands at the edge of the great lake, unnoticed by all the revellers. She skates close to him with the child, and they stand on the ice, both looking out across the city.

"Kat," The child says, and she inclines her head down in order to hear her small voice, "I want a baby sister." Katerina laughs then, sparkling like the amethyst stones on her throat, to mask the stab of pain the mention of a baby girl brings her. He notices.

"I once had a baby girl," Her tone is quiet and he is surprised. Russian suits her better than English ever did, but the longing in her tone when she speaks of her baby surprises him. She has been hard to track down, and the hunt for her has been trying, but he is glad to find her now.

"What did she look like?" The shutters slide smoothly over her face and Katerina ruffles the girl's hair with a smile.

"That's a story for another time Irina," She smiles, "Now go on, your mother is waiting for you."

She has never found her child, she thinks once she is safely ensconced in her carriage. She lets her head fall back on the cushions and allows herself to think of the baby who is long dead at this point, she knows. A raven haired girl who grows up to live a full and happy life is the one she dreams of, not the baby who most probably died in a pool of her own blood.

Katerina makes it to her chambers before they realise her stone eyes are glittering, and there she sits, pale feet dangling off the end of the bed. The fire is warm, she knows. She wants to step into the middle of it and crumble into nothing but ash. Doesn't she deserve it? The trail of blood she has left justifies her death. But she won't die, not now, not ever. She will live for hundreds of years and play at being happy until she gets so good at lying she will believe she is. She is happier here than she has ever been before, but is aware her time here is growing short. People will begin to talk soon, like people always do.

She hears the whisper of her name a few hours later and the goblet of spiced wine clutched in her jewel encrusted fingers falls onto the floors below. She would recognise that voice anywhere, has committed it to memory so she shall know when her time is up. Standing, she turns to face him, bobbing a mocking bow before she breathes his name.

"Elijah," She whispers, and the words ghost across his skin in a way that wants to make him cry with relief and kill her in the same moment.

"Katerina," he says again, and it is a reverent prayer and a broken promise rolled into one. She remains stoic, back straight, but he notices the glitter of her eyes before she wipes her face clean. She would kill herself and her family one thousand times over before she shows fear in the face of this man.

He takes a step forward and she sees her life flash before her eyes, but faces him head on. "Yes, _my lord?_" and he wants to cry because she'll never be Katerina to him, not anymore. This is the punishment he receives for his sins and as much as he would like to bear it with grace, he has never known grace when it comes to her. The things he feels for her rip into him with the fire of one thousand suns and always leave him breathless and more confused than ever before. She is not Tatia. She will never know that she was never Tatia to him.

"Oh," she says when she realises. "You are an idiot, Elijah Mikaelson. A bigger idiot than I thought you would ever become." He wants to laugh because she is right, she's always right. He was supposed to be the sensible one. He is not supposed to crave the touch of this girl who looks at him as if he is the last person on Earth she wants to see.

The accented words draw emotions from him that he wants to forget, to never feel, but instead he steps closer to her. They are each others poisons and will be each others undoing, he can feel it.

"Come to kill me?" she smiles with a quirk of her eyebrow, and he wants to kill her to prove he can.

(he can't)

Instead his hand travels across her waist, and he holds her tightly to him because he will break if he lets her go. Explode like a phoenix and light up the sky. She remains still, in the same position after he leaves.

They are both gone by morning.

She flits from city to city for a good fifty years before she settles in Paris. Wide eyed Katerina Petrova may not be as innocent as she once was, but she has not experienced anything like that before. The lavish palaces catch her attention as St. Petersburg did, and she will linger here for a while longer.

(really she just wants mama back)

She piles her hair on her head, higher than it has ever been, and pushes her breasts as high as they will go. She will conquer this court as she has conquered every other. She can't even find it in herself to feel surprised when Queen Maria introduces her to her 'most trusted advisor', and it is him, serene as ever.

_Don't you ever feel_? she screams at him later and throws her favourite vase at his head. He steps out of the way, and she lets the anger build until she has thrown herself onto to him before he fully understands what is happening.

She wants to shred his skin until he has bled dry in front of her, as he did to her family. "_Ils sont morts parce que vous les avez tués!" _She screams, louder and louder until she finds her back against the tapestry of her wall. The scratches on his face shine brightly as they begin to fade, and she sags against the wall. The blood will never fade from your dresses, she thinks, and she is almost glad for it.

"I didn't," he says, lifting her face up with a finger.

"They are dead because you killed them." And she is upright again, body straight and proud against his own. He lets his head fall into the skin of her neck, and smells her still. "I'm sorry," his lips linger against her for three beats before he is gone.

She figures they both have a few hundred years to get over the embarrassment of that meeting.

He finds her again before the Salvatore's have her, in the most unlikely of places. Katerina is in Poland, helping to ease the pain of those wounded by soldiers of the revolution. It is a far cry from the glittering palaces he has always seen her in before, but the whispers that follow her are what alert him to her presence.

They call her płaszczu królowej, or the cloaked queen, and he cannot help but feel it suits her when he sees her one night, feeding her blood to one man before breaking another's neck. Their eyes meet in the darkness, and she shrugs before lifting the emerald velvet of her cloak onto her dark head.

"He was past saving," she brushes past him and melts into the night, and he wonders who she is talking about.

He seeks her out after the revolution is finished, and finds her burning her likeness.

"I am a creature of dust and grief and bitter longings," she says to the ash of the pictures of her, and he agrees. He knows he is meant to listen to this. He cannot imagine what life is like for her- he already grows weary of this travel and he is not in any real danger. She must be exhausted, but he has not seen her falter once.

"Must you keep following me?" She still faces the ash, but he hears the plea in her voice. She is not delirious as she was in France, no this is Katerina at her most deadly- composed and put together, but capable of enough vulnerability that she can make anyone hers.

He is already hers. He feels the weight of his sentence, _she must burn, she must beg, and she must do it before you, seeing as it was you that let her run, brother, and don't come back until she is ash, _but he is not past salvation yet, or so he tells himself.

The darkness spreads over the forest as they both observe each other in silence. Her hair lies in waves down her back, dark and long and beautiful as ever. She wears another green dress, much like the one he'd chased her in, so many moons ago.

"When will you kill me?" And he finds he has no answer and is instead fumbling with the buttons of his own cloak. Something about her turns him into a fool. She inspires that quality in all men she meets. "You have caught me," He says simply, and she laughs then, an ominous laugh that chills him to the core. She is not Katerina, she is not Katerina, _she is not._ With every century that passes, she becomes less and less like Katerina, and more and more into the shapeless demon she is destined to become.

"Then the game is up," she rises and faces him for the first time that night, and he is struck, as he always is, by the smooth beauty of her face. He would kill Klaus, burn them all if he was not sensible. But sensible he is, and sensible he shall remain, until he decides to give himself completely to her.

(which will probably be never. He knows himself well enough to know that he will always put his family before all else, because in the end, they will be all that remain)

"Katerina, come with me," he tries, extending a hand to her, "come with me and I promise you will be allowed to live."

She sneers at his hand with the haughty air of a queen, but when she looks and meets his eyes, her face is sad.

"I wish I could believe you," She strokes one long pale finger along his face, before adding as an afterthought, "kochanie."

Darling, he finds out what it means later. Darling, darling, darling, he repeats, over and over.

She turns and melts into the darkness, and that is the last he sees of her before she is swallowed by the land of the free, and spat out as someone entirely different.

He watches her fall in love with another man, but ensures that this time, she does not see him. She is the perfect siren- all careful curls and raspberry red lips, but she does not know that it takes much less for her to ensnare a man. She is all innocence in the daylight, so refreshingly sweet and charming that he almost convinces himself she is Katerina. But no, this vision of loveliness will never be Katerina again, she swears to herself.

By night, she is the very devil itself. She flits from bedroom to bedroom, carelessly smearing blood on her cheeks as she goes. He wants to take her, wants her to be his again. The jealously nearly eats him alive, but he refuses to acknowledge it.

He leaves her then, without a touch or a kiss or even a word. When he sees her again he watches her watch Stefan with Klaus and he's never been more disgusted with himself. She turns and greets him with a grim smile.

"Family reunion time, I suppose," her words are cutting and he gives her a wry smile. They have all changed; moved on without him and he is left sitting there with nothing left but sand in his hands, and even that is sliding through his fingers. He watches Klaus and Bekah, laughing and happy and feels a pang of loneliness. He has been lonely for four hundred years, with nothing to do but tail Katerina until she turned to Katherine.

Katherine is unforgiving. She is scared still- scared of Klaus and what he will do if he finds her, but she is heady on the taste of new love. She still believes Stefan will be hers. She believes in him enough to want to protect him and care for him.

"You know," He leans on the door frame behind her, but she does not spare him a glance, "You are turning into me." He lets out a chuckle when she turns on stilettos to face him, brown eyes flashing.

Katherine is spiky, and none of the sweet softness Katerina held. "I am not you! This is true love. My feelings for him are reciprocated." Her words are spikier than her heels he thinks, but cannot bring himself to feel anything.

"For how long _kochanie? _So were mine, at the start." She looks as if she wants to murder him, but when he grazes her arm with his hand, he feels her fear. Underneath it, she is still herself. She always will be. Maybe that's why he still holds onto the little hope he has for her.

She does not leave after their encounter, as they always have before. She stays and ensures Stefan is safely compelled and sent on his way before continuing her watch over him. Elijah is mad. He rips apart towns until they rain blood, but she will never know. He loses all control for three long years before he reigns himself in and goes back to trying to find her.

Katerina will never die- at least not at his hands. He knows it, she knows it. He is done. She has ruined him. _Weak weak weak, _his brain says, and he is inclined to agree. He watches her feed on another human that looks slightly like him one night, and knows she is giving him a sign.

"You can come out know Elijah," Her tone must have mocked him for the past hundred years. He wants to collapse he is so tired, but he cannot collapse unless it is in her arms.

"Killing me, I see Katerina." Her mouth twists with displeasure and the nickname, and he steels himself for the venom that will follow.

"You wish," her name is like poison from his lips and she is drowning in him. She is drowning in the memories of everything (of him), so acute that they kill her and why- why can't he just leave her alone?

She wants to crack, she wants to break, but she settles for throwing him into a wall and hightailing out of there. Katherine Pierces do not break. Katerina Petrovas may have, but she was braver, she was stronger now. And soon she would have Stefan. She would never feel anything for Elijah again.

The world has changed her and scarred her and she does not know who she is anymore. Katherine Pierce (or is she Katerina today?) finds herself on a dock in Bulgaria, whispering prayers to herself in her mother tongue. She almost misses Elijah. She can feel him sometimes; feel his ghost in the air around her.

She will not break. No, she has survived the test of time and even the test of Klaus, who proved to be nothing more than a weakling. Love did not kill her, and neither did Stefan, as much as he had wanted to.

Maybe this century, she will not need to conquer the world. She fancies becoming a farmer, or maybe helping children. Maybe she will go to Africa- she has not been since the eighteenth century anyway. Or maybe Peru, or even Madagascar. The world is yours, Katerina, she tells herself, trying to imagine the voices in her head belong to her mama.

She is more tired than she has ever been. Maybe she will die this year.

(You will not Katerina, I brought you up better than that)

She immerses herself in memories of her family, lying on the dock with her feet in the water and closed eyes upturned to the sky.

"Katerina?" The dream voice in her head whispers, in a deep man's voice, comforting and familiar.

"татко?" she murmurs in return, letting her hands run along the dock, before she realises it is a real voice.

Her eyes fly open to meet the blue of the sky, but she scrambles to her feet in an instant.

"Elijah, I thought we were done with this." Her voice is smaller than it has ever been, and tired, so tired. He steps closer. "I can't stop." He confesses, and he thinks she will cry, she looks so distraught when he says that.

"I promise you Elijah, I am not as you thought I was. The chase will have distorted your memories of me and you will find yourself quite disappointed with the 'prize' at the end."

She begins to turn away, slowly and calmly. She is peaceful here, in a resigned, sad sort of way, but mostly she is Katerina. If she leaves now he will never have her.

"wait," he says and grabs for her wrists, turning her to face him. Tight ringlets are relaxed today, he notes, and she is clothed in a simple summer dress. She looks 'the peasant girl' she swore she would never be again.

"I do not care," He says and his hands graze her face gently before settling on her lips. Clouded eyes gaze up on his own, and when they finally kiss, it tastes of sadness and years of yearning and longing and weariness.

Mostly though, it tastes like peace.

.


End file.
